Hacker News Reader

FigBugon LGPL violation/Missing references to Ethereumj project

Titles can't be copyrighted. Words can be trademarked, but they aren't exclusive. As long as there is no risk of confusion, then the same word can be trademarked by different people for different purposes. Think: Apple Computer vs Apple the record label -- it wasn't an issue until Apple Computer started getting into the music business.

FigBugon Bitcoin Can Drop 50% and China Miners Will Still Make Money

In the previous bubble, there was a manufacturer that would 'test' or 'burn in' the miner until it became unprofitable to run and then they'd ship it to you. They'd get paid twice.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-mining-company-...

FigBugon James Dolan, co-creator of SecureDrop, has died

Says today for me, maybe something to do with timezones?

FigBugon An array of eight SN76489 sound chips playable via USB MIDI

I found an emulator here https://github.com/stella-emu/stella, I'll see if it's not too hard to pull the audio code out.

FigBugon An array of eight SN76489 sound chips playable via USB MIDI

Sorry, that was a typo on my part, I meant Windows / Mac users can get binaries -- Linux users can compile...

FigBugon An array of eight SN76489 sound chips playable via USB MIDI

If anybody wants to play an SN76489 in their favourite DAW, I found an open source emulation and turned it into a VST plugin. https://github.com/FigBug/SN76489 Also did a SID (Commodore 64), PAPU (Gameboy) and RP2A03 (NES).

Windows / Linux users can get binaries from my website: www.socalabs.com Linux users can compile themselves.

FigBugon Open source modular synth software lets you create 70s & 80s electronic music

I always let my users click on a knob to direct enter a value with the keyboard. But keyboard shortcuts to increase / decrease a value -- that's just a pain. Mouse drag / mouse wheel is far faster at going between coarse and fine adjust.

FigBugon Open source modular synth software lets you create 70s & 80s electronic music

Knobs are still the best option I've come up with, they act like sliders with the mouse, yet they are smaller so you can have more density. You can also draw a longer track for a given control size, 2pir > 2*r. They often get assigned to a knob on a midi controller anyway, so it makes sense.

My knobs look like software, I refuse to do screw heads, metal finishes, etc.

I haven't done much touch screen software, so no comments there.

FigBugon Apple is close to acquiring Shazam, sources say

An ASCAP license for a general business is around $3.33 * occupancy per year. There isn't that much money to save by getting out of licensing fees.

FigBugon 3-D printed plastic objects that can communicate with WiFi devices

Amazon recurring delivery sends me laundry detergent, toilet paper, soap, etc. on a monthly schedule. It I get to much I can pause for a bit.

FigBugon What happens when patients find out how good their doctors are? (2004)

The doctor chooses. In Canada, doctors can accept whoever they want and they'll only accept patients with good 'fit'. Everybody else is stuck going to a walk in clinic or the ER. How does it work in US? Do Doctors charge different rates for a checkup? I thought it was fairly opaque between the doctor and the insurance company?

FigBugon Ask HN: What is the funniest bug you encountered?

> A static local variable in an extern inline function always refers to the same object. > 7.1.2/4 - C++98/C++14 (n3797)

(functions are by default extern, so, unless you specifically mark your function as static, this applies to that function)

What the OP did should be fine and not cause an issues. The only way it could cause issues if they also made the function static.

FigBugon Ask HN: What is the funniest bug you encountered?

It wasn't funny at the time. I helped develop and app + hardware for measuring the force generated when luge / ski cross / boarder cross athletes start. The handles measure the force and sent the data to an iPad which also recorded video.

Worked fine in the office. Every time we went up on the mountain to test, the video didn't work. Go back to the hotel it worked fine.

Whole project was going to fail because of this. Finally it worked once on the mountain, so we proved the system could work.

Finally I found the bug. When setting the video orientation, I was passing in device orientation instead of UI orientation. In my office, I always have my iPad on a stand, so device orientation matched ui orientation and everything worked fine.

When I was on the mountain, I held the iPad flat so I could shield it from the sun with my body, then I'd lift it up when the athlete was about to start. The video would fail to record if device orientation was 'down' since that isn't a valid orientation to rotate video.

I only ended up finding it because I ended up leaving my iPad stand at home one day.

FigBugon Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

> Ben Johnson recently was found to be on PEDs

Recently? Wasn't he caught in 1988?

FigBugon Enabling the F4 key in macOS

I completely forgot about the dashboard, I can't remember the last time I looked at it. It used to be such a big deal / selling point of OS X.

FigBugon Procedurally generated electronic music

I'm currently working on a DAW, and this is definitely the direction we'd like to head. In our previous version, we added some basic chord progressions. The next most likely chords are suggested on statistics from popular music. But I'm stuck on where to take it next. I have some ideas for a melody generator, but I don't really know anything about machine learning, etc. When you are ready to implement you API, I'd be very interested in talking to you. Send me an email at roland@tracktion.com

FigBugon Procedurally generated electronic music

> 503.03(a) Works-not originated by a human author.

> In order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable.

Possibly nobody, but it depends how much input the program requires to generate the output. Just press a button and a song comes out -- can't be copyrighted. User has to enter a lot of parameters to generate output, user gets get copyright.

FigBugon Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

> Older developers of HN, what are your experiences?

I turned 40 this year, I haven't noticed any differences. I've been contracting since 2010 and I never meet most of my clients, I guess they could guess my age from the length of my experience. I specialize in Pro Audio / DSP which seems to be an older field, maybe because it's slower changing and experience is more important.

I think racial / gender discrimination is a bigger issue than age.

FigBugon PBR for Audio Software Interfaces (2016)

Sliders. Tracktion Waveform, the DAW I also work on uses almost no knobs. (I think the only one is pan on the mixer). The problem with them is that they are big. When we don't have room we make them small and then a bigger one pops up when you click on it.

FigBugon PBR for Audio Software Interfaces (2016)

I hate skeuomorphic UI and wish it would die. The number of users that have ever used a hardware compressor, eq, gate, analog synth etc is much smaller than the number of users that have grown up creating music completely on their PC. I think it makes more sense to focus on the second group.

The plugins I work on tend to look more like software than any piece of hardware. I still use knobs because they are more efficient use of screen real estate. When you click / drag them, left is decrease, right is increase. You don't need to drag around like a physical knob.

Here is one set of plugins I did: https://www.tracktion.com/products/daw-essentials-collection

FigBugon Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

Selective Availability was turned off in 2000, prior to that error was about 50m. Differential GPS could work around it anyway, so there wasn't a lot of point to keeping it on.

FigBugon Electric vehicle price is rising, but cost-per-mile is falling

It's already happening, last one os gone from downtown Vancouver: http://bc.ctvnews.ca/last-gas-vancouver-s-sole-remaining-dow...

It's due to property values, not electric cars, but it would be interesting to see if people switch to electrics because of disappearing gas stations.

FigBugon Electric vehicle price is rising, but cost-per-mile is falling

Unless you live somewhere really hot (Leaf only has passive battery cooling), a Leaf will make it to about 100,000km before it loses it's first bar on battery life meter. (There are 12 bars)

FigBugon Electric vehicle price is rising, but cost-per-mile is falling

I live in Vitoria, BC. It doesn't get that cold here, but it was below freezing I lost maybe 10% of range. It takes maybe 3 hours to change with my level 2 charger.

FigBugon Dplug for Developing VST Plugins on Linux

Just a note that JUCE is now free for indie developers if your yearly revenue is less than $50K per year. It just adds a JUCE logo for a few seconds the first time your plugin window opens.

If you don't like that, GPL is still an option.

FigBugon Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

http://socalabs.com/

I just started a few days ago, I'm making VST plugins that emulate sound chips from old consoles / computers. (There is also a weird vocal synth in there). Currently working on a C64, hope to have it done tonight.

FigBugon Engineers in San Francisco Have Mediocre Take Home Pay

They aren't 50%, highest tax bracket is 45% over 250001 EUR or 294440 USD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Germany#Income_tax

Church tax could be another 9% if you are a member of a church.

Compare to the US where top tax rate is 39.6% + 12.3% = 51.9% in California.

FigBugon How I tried to get into game development and failed

Can you recommend some good parking games?

FigBugon Ask HN: What language/framework do you plan to use in your next project?

C++ / JUCE

I'm not really aware of another good option for doing AU/VST/AAX plugins.

FigBugon The First Complete Map of the Ocean Floor Is Stirring Controversial Waters

Selective Availability was turned off in 2000, everybody gets the same GPS signal now. GPS III won't support it, so it won't be able to be turned back on.